New Drone Hangar Opens At Fort Drum

Fort Drum is now home to a $5.1 million federally-funded green technology hangar.

The New York Air National Guard opened the facility Tuesday at Wheeler-Sack Army Airfield.

The hangar will house MQ-9 "Reaper" remotely piloted aircraft, also known as drones.

The MQ-9s at Fort Drum are operated by the 174th Attack Wing, headquartered at Hancock Field Air National Guard Base in Syracuse, and are used to train Air Force pilots, sensor operators, and maintenance personnel.

The $5,194,860 facility took nine months to build and will house two MQ-9 drones within 12,000 square feet of storage space.

This includes in-floor heating, translucent panels to bring in natural light, a solar hot water heater and solar collector panels built into the walls which allow the sun to help heat the building.

The MQ-9 is an aircraft used in a surveillance/reconnaissance mode that can also deliver laser guided missiles or 250 to 500 pound JDAM bombs on a selected target.

The Aircraft flown by the 174th are used to provide a combat air patrol over American and coalition units operating in Afghanistan.

The 174th Attack Wing has been using temporary hangar space allocated from the 10th Mountain Division's 10th Combat Aviation Brigade.

This space did not allow enough hangar space to shelter all aircraft needed for flying operations and conduct routine maintenance on the aircraft.

The 174th Attack Wing uses the runways at Wheeler-Sack Army Airfield to launch aircraft which are used to train MQ-9 pilots and sensor operators from the Active Air Force, Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve.

The pilots fly the aircraft by satellite uplink, while sensor operators are responsible for spotting targets on the ground using the MQ-9's sophisticated visual, infrared and synthetic aperture radar systems.

At Fort Drum, the crews practice launching and landing the aircraft, along with dropping practice munitions at the air-ground range operated by the 174th Attack Wing.

The new hangar is the first step in a series of Air National Guard building projects planned for Wheeler Sack Army Airfield. The 174th Attack Wing plans to build a second hangar in the coming year to support launch and recovery operations which will allow MQ-9 operations to move completely out of the Army facilities.

Along with training MQ-9 aircrew at Fort Drum, the 174th also trains MQ-9 maintainers at its Field Training Detachment at Hancock Field.

The 174th Attack Wing's personnel also operate MQ-9 aircraft around the world from a command and control center at the base, and also deploy around the world as part of Air Force Air Expeditionary Wings.

Members of the 174th Attack Wing also respond to state emergencies and other state domestic operations missions when called upon and maintain high-tech communications and command and control equipment that can be called upon by the Governor of New York when required.